Frictionful

It's a common adage that frictionless = better user experience. But from my own experience, I've seen that's not true 100% of the time.

When working on my language app's activation rate, I discovered that fewer steps in onboarding didn't necessarily mean more people activated.

I recently listened to an episode of Lenny's Podcast with Steward Butterfield (found of Slack) where he dives deep on why reducing friction isn't always the best path and why increasing comprehension is sometimes more important. 👇

A few quotes that stood out to me:

"There's also another issue around friction which is: It became like a mantra, an assumption that you should always be trying to remove friction."

"No one needs to be explained why they'd want a car or beer. But everyone would have to be explained why they want Slack. And the problem there is comprehension"

"My intent isn't always 100%, and the specificity of my intent isn't always 100%."